Material Science Special Seminar Ⅰ

Graduate School of Science, Mr. Namerikawa

I visited TU Darmstadt as a special seminar in a foreign country at the beginning of March for three days. Darmstadt is a provincial city located south of Frankfurt. In the city, streetcars run, which we took on to the University from the hotel we stayed.

On the first day, we gave presentations about our own research themes. I am not so good at speaking English, so I was anxious about it, but I managed to finish it and became a little bit confident to give an English presentation. After our presentation, we listened to presentations about research by the professors in the university.

On the second day, I visited laboratories of the theory groups in the faculty of engineering. In the theory group of TU Darmstadt, three teams that treat different-scale objects collaborate in their research. For instance, I heard that the team of Prof. Hongbin Zhang which treats the smallest-scale physical properties does ab initio calculations and by utilizing the results, teams that treat larger-scale properties do their calculations. This fact contrasts with that each team do their research independently in the condensed matter physics group I belong to. I thought the system of the theory group of TU Darmstadt is good. When I visited laboratories, Prof. Zhang explained about their research in detail for me. I utilize the method called density functional theory (DFT) and the group of Prof. Zhang uses the same method, so he told me themes and methods related to things I do. I am so interested especially in the way to find materials which have maximum physical properties by machine learning.

I have not been abroad at all, so I worried about my long-term research in foreign countries. However, this good experience in which I was able to feel the atmosphere of a foreign university eased the anxiety.

Figure 1: Professors of TU Darmstadt and GP-MS program's students